It's been widely reported and that makes it fact-esque. - Stephen Colbert

Social Security: Because I Want to Impress the A-List

From last night's roadshow performance: BushCo's vision of our bright futures in his debt-fueled, service sector economy:

If you're making $8 an hour over your life, and you start having a personal account when you're 21 years old, and at the age 63 you'll end up with a $100,000 nest egg. That's if you stay at $8 all your life. In other words, that's how money grows. Wouldn't it be fantastic if a lot of folks who work for Russell's company were able to say, here's my money, here's the nest egg I built up for my family.

And then comes the clawback and the forced annuity, which is not inheritable. Ownership!

It looks like "blended indexing" is the newest term to come out of the piratization think tanks. I have to admit, it's good. It sounds like a flavor of ice cream - blended indexing with pralines. I wonder why "clawback" hasn't made it into the corporate press?

His aides say the benefit cuts proposed by Mr. Bush have to be judged against what will happen if nothing is done to shore up the system as the baby boom generation ages and life expectancy increases. Social Security's trustees estimate that if no action is taken, the system can pay full benefits until 2041, and after that will take in only enough through payroll taxes to cover about 73 percent of promised benefits.

Current law mandates a specific benefit schedule for future recipients. Without statutory changes, the federal government would retain the legal obligation to continue paying scheduled benefits -- in theory, out of general revenues - even when the Social Security trust fund is exhausted, projected by the Social Security trustees to occur in 2041 and by the Congressional Budget Office in 2052. But Angle used his misleading definition of "current law" to claim that "in most cases, workers would do better under the indexing option than if nothing were done."

Since an actual default by the government in the payment of benefits would be unprecedented, it is all but certain that Congress will enact changes to "current law" before the projected exhaustion of the trust fund. But Angle's graphic contrasted Bush's proposal with a straw man. The Social Security trustees project that the system will take in enough revenue in 2045 to pay 73 percent of scheduled benefits. But what Angle's chart labelled "current law" [and what Stevenson attributes to "BushCo aids"] would actually occur only if Congress chose one specific option for restoring solvency -- an across-the-board 27 percent benefit cut -- that, to date, no one has proposed.

Bang for the Buck: Boosting the American Economy

Compassionate Conservatism in Action

Molly

"We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war."

Zinn

"[O]ur time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice."

Bono

"True religion will not let us fall asleep in the comfort of our freedom. Love thy neighbor is not a piece of advice, it's a command. ...

God, my friends, is with the poor and God is with us, if we are with them. This is not a burden, this is an adventure."

The Reverend Al Sharpton

Ray wasn't singing about what he knew, 'cause Ray had been blind since he was a child. He hadn't seen many purple mountains. He hadn't seen many fruited plains. He was singing about what he believed to be.

Mr. President, we love America, not because of all of us have seen the beauty all the time.

But we believed if we kept on working, if we kept on marching, if we kept on voting, if we kept on believing, we would make America beautiful for everybody.

Marx

''With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 percent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 percent will produce eagerness, 50 percent positive audacity; 100 percent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 percent, and there is not a crime which it will not scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged.''